Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

This weekend, your favorite blogger attended the American Craft Beer Festival at the Seaport World Trade Center here in sunny Boston, Massachusetts. I’m a professional writer, but I’m struggling to come up with the words to describe the childlike joy that fills my heart every time I walk through those convention center doors and see 86 craft brewers pouring more than 400 different beers. It’s enough to make you believe that there just might be a providential force benevolently watching over us, dedicated to helping us achieve happiness in this existence.

Every year, I print out this master list of all the brewers and beers, and try to highlight the ones that I absolutely must try. For whatever reason, I completely forgot to do that this year, so I was flying blind. Every year, I also promise myself that I’ll take notes and blog about the experience, and every year I fail to get it done. Not this time! Using a streamlined, no-frills approach of using simple annotations on my handy Beer Fest guide, I was able to create a bare-bones record of my experience. I won’t lie: the tasting cup is tiny, but you can sip as many different beers as you want in three and a half hours, so my note taking um, suffered as the day progressed. But let’s take a walk through and see if I can’t tell you a little bit about my day and some of the excellent beers I tasted.

Stay pretty? Not a problem, postcard.

# The toast of last year’s fest was the relatively new Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, a brewer based out of Cambridge (although they don’t have an actual brewery, so they’re not quite based anywhere). In fact, by the time I made it to their booth last year, they were all out of beer. This time around, I made sure I went to them first. I’ve had their Jack D’Or American saison before, so I tried the Fluffy White Rabbits, which is described as a “hoppy Belgian triple” (get it?) I scribbled down “light, hoppy, sweet,” but for the life of me, I can’t recall anything else about it. Chalk that up to it being the first beer I had. The good news is, I wouldn’t have bothered to write anything down if it sucked.

# The craft beer industry is the craft beer industry because none of these breweries can even touch the big guys like Anheuser Busch–InBev and MillerCoors. The Boston Beer Company, maker of Sam Adams, is the largest American-owned brewery, and they famously tout in ads how small (something like 1 percent?) their share of total beer sales in America. All this being said, there are still some big guns in the craft beer community: Brooklyn Brewery, San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company, Boston’s Harpoon Brewery, Delaware’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewing Company, and California’s Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, to name a few.

These are breweries that, honestly, have nothing to prove. They’re the prime movers of the industry, and some of the most reliably innovative brewers out there. That said, some stood out and some lagged behind on Saturday. Brooklyn offered a virtuoso lineup of brews: I started off with a taste of the Brooklyn Summer, an English “light dinner ale” which, out of the tap, is my second favorite beer ever. I immediately got back into line to taste the Sorachi ale, a dry-hopped saison. (A saison, also know as farmhouse ale, is described by the good fellows at Beer Advocate as “a very complex style; many are very fruity in the aroma and flavor. Look for earthy yeast tones, mild to moderate tartness. Lots of spice and with a medium bitterness. They tend to be semi-dry with many only having touch of sweetness.”) This one failed to disappoint; if you know Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, you know I appreciated the extra touch of hops. I also had a sip of their Dark Matter, a brown ale aged in whiskey barrels. Just think this, with an actual whiskey aftertaste. Delish!

# Harpoon was a sponsor of the event, so they got a prime location with additional taps. Good, because if the Brooklyn Summer is my second favorite beer, then the Harpoon IPA is Numero Uno. (I rhapsodized about this nectar back when I thought I was leaving Boston forever.) This time around, I sampled their 100 Barrel Series offering, Pott’s Landbier, an easy, not-too-hoppy not-too-malty session lager that was vaguely reminiscent of another of Harpoon’s 100 Barrel beers, the kellerbier, a truly tasty style that for the life of me, I can never find anywhere.

# I was a little disappointed with Stone. These guys make notoriously hoppy (and delicious) beers liek Arrogant Bastard and Ruination. When I said up top that there are brewers that don’t have anything to prove, the corollary is that they can take some risks. And the corollary there is that some risks blow up in your face! Stone’s booth featured their cask-conditioned IPA, each dry-hopped with a different variety of hops—Centennial, Chinook, Amarillo, Nugget, and Columbus. It was an interesting experience, tasting how different types of hops affect the taste of a beer you’re already familiar with. However, not every type was a hit, and being cask-conditioned ales at a beer fest, the brews came out kind of tepid. Other people can disagree, but I find that my beer tastes better cold. It was sad, because looking at the Stone offerings in the guide, I was really looking forward to having my hair blown back. It was not.

# I’m not a great food/taste writer. I just have a hard time describing how things smell and taste. Things taste the way they taste. What do you want from me! I say all of this because I really liked the Shipyard Summer Ale, an American pal. But the best way I could describe it was that it had a feety, socky taste. In a good way! Anyone that’s ever eaten a piece of cheese knows what I’m talking about.

# Every time you go to one of these beer festivals, you run the risk of discovering a completely new style that you never knew you liked, but thereafter can’t live without. I got a taste for the aforementioned saison style at last year’s beer fest. This year, the honor went to a style that I had never even heard of: the black IPA. Apparently, in the beer community, there’s a bit of a controversy as to whether the black IPA represents a new style or simply a fad. (I’m apt to agree with the Idaho Statesman’s take.) The fact remains, though, that the stuff is tasty. I tried two types of black IPA on Saturday: one from Clown Shoes, which is actually contract-brewed out of Mercury Brewing in Ipswich, and one from Blue Hills Brewery in Canton. The virtue of the black IPA (or Cascadian Dark Ale, as a vocal faction of beer enthusiasts want to call it) is that it combines the malty taste of a stout, with the light body and hoppy character of an IPA. The Blue Hills iteration leaned in the IPA direction, while the Clown Shoes leaned toward the stout. Both were excellent. I’m very much looking forward to more examples of this delectable brew trickling eastward.

There’s a bunch more beers that I tried and loved, but this post is getting a little long. If there’s a demand for more insight, let me know in comments.

You may not have noticed, but the sun was shining this morning. It was warm. A sweet breeze was blowing. It was as if the spirit of life were refilling the empty, fragile vessels of our souls. That’s right. After a long hiatus, Gossip Girl is back. I’m just praying that my tears of joy don’t fall on my keyboard and cause computer problems.

Also, I watched this off the DVR, so the time stamps are pretty useless. The whole blog is pretty useless, actually.

10:25 Zomg! GG is back!

Isn’t B obligated to inform her best friend that Nate is, in fact, a lamewad?

So Damien is from the same boarding school that S went to because she was a giant whore. Is this the uh, School for Scoundrels or something?

10:29 Hi Damien. Got any drugs you need to be delivered?

10:30 I probably should have looked over my last recap so I can remember why Rufus is pissed at Lily. This has been a long hiatus!

Since when are jewelers like lawyers and priests? Client confidentiality? What the hell is that?

10:31 “My grandfather got sick of watching me text you” = “My grandfather got sick of me.” Also, Serena wants to take things slow with Nate. I feel like anything would be slower than like, doing it on the bar. So carry on.

10:33 Remember when Dan was desperately in love with Serena? And now he’s casually giving Nate advice about her. Good turnaround, Dan. What a disappointment you are.

10:35 This is absurd! Jenny is making drug jackets! What a rotten human!

Anna Karenina roleplaying. Even as an English major, I don’t really appreciate that one.

10:38 Oh, that’s right. Rufus is going to shack up with the woman from the co-op. There’s that little subplot. How could I have forgotten!

10:40 But Serena, you’re right. The last thing you want to do IS rush into something! Why do I know your life better than you?

10:41 “I thought you lived on the Upper East side with your wife.” Just when I think Dan is a useless drip, he goes and redeems himself with a killer line.

“This wasn’t a Parent Trap situation that you and jenny could swoop in on.” Rufus with the burn! Did they get like, the good writers to take on this scene?

10:44 I’d like to see Jenny try to outsmart the international drug dealer.

10:45 Is that the first time someone has mentioned that Blair’s social-climbing agenda isn’t the most important thing in the world? Seems like it.

1047 Do you think the outfit that jenny would have worn with the sweet tart jacket would have displayed her cleavage as amply as serena’s? probably not, right?

10:51 You’ve changed, Serena? So why are you wearing a jacket made of drugs? Eh?

10:52 “That whore may be my mother.” I keep forgetting that it was painfully apparent to all of us that Chuck’s mom was at Bart’s grave, but that the folks in the show would never assume that in a million years. Woops.

Whoa, the masquerade ball was two years ago? The sands of time are slipping through my fingers like so many . . . grains of sand.

10:55 I really liked Serena’s shoes.

Hey, good idea Rufus, talking to your wife about your problems.

10:59 So . . . is this woman lying? Is it bad that I can’t tell? She’s got to be lying, right?

Also, is there any reason why we should believe that Blair’s super powers of persuasion work on grownups?

11:03 Come ON, rufus. You’re acting like your kid!

11:06 that newborn in the locket looked JUST LIKE CHUCK!